A Unified Theory of Insider Trading Law

In A Unified Theory of Insider Trading Law, forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal, I argue that the classical theory of insider trading has outworn its usefulness because it fails to do what a theory must, which is explain settled law and provide answers to unsettled law that are intuitively appealing. Instead, courts should replace the classical theory with an alternative, the misappropriation theory, which courts currently limit to cases involving insider trading by “outsiders”—non-employees of the corporation whose securities form the basis of the trade. The result would be a single, unified theory of insider trading law that both explains what courts do and yields intuitively compelling results.